Further to my April blog entry on 21st Century skills, over recent months I have been exploring the nature of the social, political and economic changes in our society over the past 20 years (or rather the turn of the century changes heading into the century we are already 10 years into). If this change is real and significant, as it undoubtedly is, then there are huge implications to schools in terms of curriculum, teaching/pedagogy and classroom environment. Such changes are very necessary because the most significant impact of the 21st Century changes is the distinct change to the nature of the student as a learner. In the next few blog postings I am going to explore various aspects of these changes. Sorry to the spatial education followers of Spatialworlds for this deviation into the world of educational theory but in fact such identification of the changes and their implications for schooling provides a sound argument as to why we need to use spatial technology and develop spatial literacy skills in schools. With so much data attached to place and the mobility of humanity in the 21st Century, spatial skills and technology are the skills of the 21t Century. However they continue to be ignored and not understood by the education community. Hence the reason for my paper which forms the basis of these blog entries on 21st Century change. I will be interested to read your responses.

Here it goes! Part 1.

Much is written about what is a 21st Century curriculum. As we are immersed in the writing of the Australian Curriculum it is important that we review and assess the curriculum developed through the lens of the copious literature which has been written on the nature of 21st Century change and the need for a distinct educational response. Since the early 1990’s educationalists have been thinking and surmising about how the changing world of the 21st Century will impact on education and in turn what are the implications for the learners, teachers, schools, classrooms and curriculum. This paper challenges the notion that we can continue maintaining the education status quo and just ignore the societal, environmental and economic changes that are upon us in the 21st Century. It is becoming increasingly obvious to many that the “factory style” of education which was developed in the 19th Century for the requirements of the Industrial Age is not suited to the information rich interconnected globalised world of the 21st Century. Although we have grown up with and feel comfortable with the system as it now exists, we may need to consider significant educational change to meet the requirements of the 21st Century citizen. What does this new world look like? Some would argue that a paradigm shift is not required but just some tweaking of what we presently do. The danger that this tweaking may simply mean technology is added but we continue to do much the same in philosophy and practice. The next few blog entries will ultimately focus on the impact of 21st Century changes on geography in schools but initially we need to look at the nature of 21st change and the likely impact of the changing 21st Century world on educational practice overall. In the next blog I will try to identify the most significant socio-economic changes which have occurred over the past few decades.

Growing the link between school and university geographersToday I am in Christchurch, New Zealand to attend the Council meeting for the Institute of Australian Geographers (IAG). The IAG has been an important player with AGTA and the RGSQ in the work of the ‘Towards a National Geography Curriculum’ project and in turn the work of ACARA in developing an Australian Curriculum for geography. Several of the IAG Executive have been closely involved in the ACARA process. The IAG Secretary, Associate Professor Alaric Maude is the ACARA Lead Writer for geography and Professor Lesley Head (IAG Vice President) and Iain Hay (IAG President) have both been on the ACARA Advisory Panel. Their input is greatly valued by geography teachers in Australia and the involvement of the academic geography community in the development of a world class geography curriculum is extremely important.The IAG conference is an interesting mix, with an amazing diversity of papers presented. Again it makes one ask the question; What is geography? As I did with the IAG Conference last year, here are some of what I consider the most interesting papers when considering the development of an energetic, diverse and creative geography curriculum for schools. In terms of topic, nothing is out of bounds, as long as the lens is spatial and the context geographical. Here are just a few examples:* Urban regeneration, drinking and young citizens: Paradoxical tensions in the governance of inner-city night time spaces.* Degrees of responsibility: How far will tourism corporates go to assist the poor and disadvantaged?* A landscape of well-being – towards a theory of the landscape and human well-being.* Environmental correlates of young people’s happiness.* Young Australians in multigenerational household: trends, drivers and implications.* Working holidays an experience or a path to migration?* Utilising GIS in education.* Senses of place and identity in contemporary rural Australia: Views from Ballarat.* Beyond greenwash, creating sustainable communities.* The changing landscape of cemeteries in Perth, WA* Power and politics of water governance and development.* (Dis)located bodies: Women and class in a changing rural Australia. * Still getting away with it: revealing geographies of the super-rich.* Cross-cultural boundary riding – Utilising Indigenous knowledge for environmental management.* Urban homebodies: Spatiality of masculinity and domesticity in inner Sydney.

These are just a few of the workshops to show the diversity of what is seen as geography. Naturally the conference also had plenty of the more traditional geomorphologic, climatological and economic geographies presented but the list above shows the social and cultural richness and contemporary nature of the study of geography in our universities (and applicable to the study of geography in schools).Unfortunately I cannot stay for the week to experience this wonderful geography with the 472 geographers attending the conference. My work here is to present to the IAG Council the development of the ACARA geography curriculum for Australia. More directly my attendance at the Council meeting was to garner the IAG’s support to ensure that ACARA and the Ministers of Education in Australia are aware of the importance of geography being a compulsory subject to Year 10. To this end the IAG Council is drafting a letter to both ACARA and the Ministers in each state requesting meetings to discuss their concerns if geography is relegated to an elective in Years 9 and 10. My attendance at the meeting also gave me the opportunity to advertise the January 2011 AGTA conference and invite the participation of academic geographers in the event. I consider the time is perfect to get more academic geographers involved in AGTA’s activities promoting the professional learning for the Australian Curriculum: geography.

Whilst talking about the conference, it is worth reporting the nature of the keynote presented on Monday night by US academic Professor Lisa Parks. The focus of her talk was that the advent of Google Earth has made the earth a target to be destroyed as a result of the widespread availability of satellite imagery. Professor Parks considers that Google Earth has “shifted the focus from caring for the world to viewing it as a target”. “Increasingly, states have used these images, which are so freely available to help destroy a societies and people’s lives through conflict, and these are the very same states that are benefiting from the rebuilding.”Professor Parks raised the issues of who has the power to produce these images and the implications of the “knowledge acquired from these images”. She challenged the right of a companies such a Google to produce and censor the images – “that should be the responsibility of decisions made by state departments and diplomats”. In fact some imaging firms were selling photos of conflict zones “like digital real estate. Do such transactions represent the public interest or rather military and corporate interests?” I found this take on the power and implications of spatial technologies an interesting adjunct to one of my previous blog entries on the pervasiveness of spatial technology and its implications for good and evil in the world. It certainly would have been a great conference to stay for – quite different to some of the more linear and conservative discipline perceptions we often have when teaching geography in schools. It is time to think laterally on the relevance of geography to young people. More on that in future blogs on 21st Century geography in our schools,

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I have taught history, geography and civics and citizenship in the South Australian education system since 1976. I have been actively involved in the promotion of geography and history over the years, in particular the use of spatial technology in schools. I am a Past Chair of the Australian Geography Teachers' Association (Chair 2008-13) and Immediate Past President of the Australian Alliance of Associations in Education (2013-present). During the development of the Australian Curriculum: Geography I was a member of the ACARA Advisory Panel (2009-2013) and Executive Director of the ESA GeogSpace project. From 2007-2011 and in 2015 I was the Manager for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) in the South Australian Department for Education and Child Development (DECD). Presently I am a Teaching Academic in HaSS Education at the University of South Australia and the Manager for the Premier's ANZAC Spirit School Prize in DECD.